Category Archives: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEW: Malabar Mind by Anita Nair

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Malabar Mind PoemsMalabar Mind Poems by Anita Nair
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This collection of 40 poems by Anita Nair begins with verse that is imbued with Indian-ness and has a timeless feel, and progresses into more modern and – at times — erotic territory. For those unfamiliar with Indian geography, the Malabar Coast is the southwest coast of India. It stretches from Goa down through Kerala, and as far as the southern tip of India. The author’s last name, Nair, is one used by members of a caste from the state of Kerala. The Malabar Coast is known for spice, tea, and coffee plantations inland, and coastal ports that carry those commodities to buyers around the world that date back long before the British colonized India. Because of the long history of the spice trade, this area has its own unique feel. That should give the reader some sense of the cultural elements suffused into this work.

The poems are generally free verse (though there’s a prose poem and perhaps some other forms,) and are mostly in the range of a couple of stanzas to about three pages, though the final poem, “The Cosmopolitan Crow” is a long form poem. The entire collection weighs in at around 100 pages. The author frequently uses a sparse form that presents lines of one to three words, but that isn’t the case for all the poems.

While there’s eroticism in parts, it’s relatively subtle and shouldn’t be an impediment to any but the primmest of readers. (Though I’ve been known to miscalculate the degree to which some folks get uptight about sexual and somatic content.)

I enjoyed this collection. I was sensual, evocative, and captured the feel of Kerala nicely.

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BOOK REVIEW: 3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri

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3 Sections3 Sections by Vijay Seshadri
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This collection of 34 poems by Vijay Seshadri won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The book includes free verse poetry, lyric poetry, and prose poems. There are poems that reflect Seshadri’s Indian heritage, such as “Three Urdu Poems,” but like Seshadri himself – who moved from Bangalore to America at age five – the preponderance of poems reflect an American experience. Most of the poems are a single page each or less, but the prose poems at the end, such as “Pacific Fishes of Canada,” cover about a dozen pages.

The human and human society, as opposed to nature, takes center stage Seshadri’s work. Dystopian notions that have crept to the fore in the popular conscious are seen in poems such as “Secret Police.” However, this may be more indicative of a look back to the Cold War, which features prominently in the aforementioned nostalgic prose poem “Pacific Fishes of Canada.” The philosophical meditation also plays prominently in this work.

I enjoyed this little sixty-seven page collection, and found it to be evocative and thought-provoking.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Like Switch by Jack Schafer

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The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People OverThe Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent’s Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over by Jack Schafer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Written by a former FBI behavior analyst, this book presents tips on how to build rapport — be it with a co-worker, a love interest, or the subject of an interrogation. There’s not a lot of material in this book that’s surprising or unexpected, but the stories of counter-intelligence operations and criminal investigations make for greater intrigue than the typical book of this nature. (Though the most common type of story in it may be the tale of “how I got a free upgrade from an airline employee,” and that’s probably not that different from what one would read in a similar book by a corporate trainer with a more mundane resume.)

One aspect of this book that did seem unique was how much discussion is given to laying the groundwork of a friendship. Schafer emphasizes the need for patience, and he uses an example of cultivating a spy that involved a Special Agent placing himself in proximity to a target day after day before he ever exchanged so much as eye contact, let alone speaking. Interestingly, the epilogue shares a similar story from a historical memoir that shows both how effective these tactics are and how long they’ve been around. I wouldn’t be surprised if a civilian expert on these issues would say, “that’s fine if you need an ultra-light hand to cultivate a spy, but the same tactics may be a little too glacial for finding a mate or building a customer base. Personally, I don’t know how well Schafer’s approach translates to the work-a-day world, but I can imagine that if one parked oneself along a potential love interest’s route for week after week they might form the opinion one is either spineless or a stalker long before one got a chance to share eye contact.

The book consists of eight chapters, plus some front and back matter. The first chapter, entitled “The Friendship Formula,” sets out some banal concepts about the need to put oneself in proximity with one’s “target,” and then to build the frequency, duration, and intensity of said proximity events. However, it goes on to introduce some of the fundamentals that are elaborated upon later.

Chapter two focuses on pre-conversational activities. This largely involves non-verbal facial expressions and body language, but it also gets into issues such as appearance. Chapter three is about a central concept that Schafer calls “the golden rule of friendship,” which is basically the idea that people like individuals who make them feel good about themselves. Of course, people may distrust flatterers, and so the direct approach may not always be the best approach. The chapter therefore addresses pitfalls as well as sound tactics.

Chapter four is about what the author calls “the laws of attraction,” which are a series of ideas used to get the subject to look at one in a favorable light while avoiding the pitfalls of being too ham-handed. These are just ways to seem more appealing, often by capitalizing on (or making clear) existing causes for the individual to like one. But sometimes they involve deck-stacking activities such as in the case of “the law of misattribution.” In misattribution one shows up when an individual has been exercising so that maybe he or she will mistake the exercise-induced endorphin high for positive feelings towards one. There is a mix of ethical and exploitative approaches, and some ideas that might be of benefit for gaining a temporary upper-hand with someone one doesn’t have any long-term concern about might not be wise to employ with someone with which one might want a long-term relationship.

Chapter five is where one gets around to talking to the target of one’s desired rapport. As with the preceding chapters, this is as much about what not to say as it is what to say, but the single biggest point is to do more listening than talking. That is, give the target plenty of opportunity to talk about his- or herself and be cognizant of what they are saying, rather than preparing one’s own words. This is easier said than done given all that one must keep in mind, and the non-verbal cues one is watching for, etc.

Chapter six returns to non-verbal communication territory, and emphasizes testing one’s efforts to build rapport while simultaneously noticing the signs of whether it’s going well or not. This allows one to adjust one’s strategy (or to know it’s time to give up.)

Chapters seven and eight include material that one won’t necessarily see in competing books. Chapter seven is about maintaining the relationship that one has established. A lot of this chapter is about conversational strategies for defusing tense situations, lessening the friction in the relationship, and getting what one wants without building animosity. The last chapter takes one into really different territory by discussing on-line relationships and the building thereof. In large part, this chapter is a cautionary tale of the risks of entering a relationship given the lack of all the non-verbal cues. There are several cases of how individuals managed to portray themselves as something they weren’t.

I found this book interesting and beneficial. Its strengths include a tight focus; it doesn’t blast one with information by fire-hose, but rather offers a few simple ideas to focus on and hammers them home. The organization was logical, basically building up over the course of a relationship / interaction from being in proximity to making eye contact to conversing to weathering an argument. I also found that the book used photographs effectively. Non-verbal communication is much more effectively and efficiently communicated by photograph, and the author used many color photographs for this purpose. There was even a series of plates that acted as a quiz, asking the reader to put the knowledge she’d acquired to use, with an Appendix serving as the quiz key.

I should mention that some jerk tactics are scattered throughout the book – by that I mean approaches designed to dupe and / or manipulate the target. These may be fair game for interrogating criminal suspects or terrorists but some could backfire upon one when put to use in a relationship that demands more trust. Usually, the author isolates himself from these tactics by telling us it was something his student or a suspect once mentioned. For example, he describes pickup artists going to an ATM kiosk, plucking up receipts showing large balances, and then using said receipts when it came time to give a girl his number as a means to subtly plant the lie that he was wealthy. Mostly, the book seemed to separate itself from the many “how to be a successful creep” books that are out there, as is noted by the chapter on fostering long-term relationships.

I’d recommend this book for anyone interested in the dynamics of building relationships.

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BOOK REVIEW: Inheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal

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InheritanceInheritance by Balli Kaur Jaswal
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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I read at least one piece of literature from every country I visit, and I picked this book for Singapore. In a way, it’s an odd choice because – while the book is set in Singapore over a two decade period — the story revolves around a Punjabi Sikh family. The family consists of single-parent father, two sons, and a daughter who is the youngest child. The father is a police officer who’d been posted to Singapore before it became an independent country. (Singapore is a small [in size, not necessarily in population] island nation that was a British colony, was under Japanese occupation during the Second World War, and then was briefly part of Malaysia — before gaining its independence in 1965.) Given the facts that: a.) Singapore is so fundamentally multi-cultural; b.) the setting substantially influences the nature of the story; and c.) the author lived in Singapore long enough to convey its feel, I stand by my choice.

The story revolves around the damage that can be done by shame and the dark side of traditional values – especially when transplanted into a society that is highly competitive, orderly, but also indulgent. That’s where the importance of the Singaporean setting comes into play. While it’s a strict society that prides itself on order, Singapore is also a mega-Asia metropolis where anyone can find a dim recess to do whatever he or she wants.

Amrit, the young woman in the family, is the single biggest point of shame for the father – and, to varying degrees, the rest of the family. She drinks to excess, is promiscuous, is generally dismissive of traditional values, and all of this ultimately results in her being unmarriageable [at least not in a traditional wedding to a family of equal or greater status as is so coveted in Indian culture.] Early in the book, she disappears for several days and throws the family into a lurch. One would think that concern for Amrit’s well-being would be the over-riding emotion during her absence, but it’s tainted by fear that she’ll make the family look bad. The problem is that Amrit is bipolar but no one recognizes this because all the family can accept is that she is misbehaving – perhaps because she never got to know her mother. Because of this, she doesn’t get treatment for her condition until long after she should have. The fear of her being seen as “mad” and the effect that would have on her ability to be wed keeps the family from helping Amrit get the medicine that would allow her manage her impulses and make better decisions.

The middle son, Narain, is a quieter embarrassment to his father. While Narain is not the kind to go on benders or to draw attention to himself, he is gay – in both a culture and a country that are intolerant of homosexuality. At the beginning of the book we see him being sent away to America to college after being prematurely discharged from military service. His father thinks college in America will make a man out of Narain, but what it does is expose him to an environment which is more permissive but at the same time which drives him away from the Sikh values with which he was raised. In short, it does exactly the opposite of what the father hoped for, and we can imagine Narain would have gone through life playing a part as dictated by traditional norms (getting married, having children, and either repressing his sexuality or leading a secret double-life) had he not spent time abroad.

Even the eldest son, Gurdev, is a disappointment to the father despite the fact that he lives life by the traditional script, marrying a wife who has traditional Punjabi values, and having three children who are successful in school. (Though the fact that they are all girls may be an unstated element of the father’s disappointment, it seems to have more to do with the fact that a cousin who was orphaned and spent time with the family is progressing more quickly in his occupation than Gurdev.)

I enjoyed this book and found it quite illuminating. One sees how tradition and modernity come to loggerheads, and how the outcome is influenced by taking place in a setting that is still trying to get a footing on how to be a country – as Singapore was at the time. It seems fascinating how culture and traditional values form – for good or for bad – blinders. The father can’t fathom that Amrit has a mental condition, not just because he’s in denial, but because it’s not a construct that’s part of his world. Narain, at the start of the book, is extremely aware of cultural norms (e.g. in the opening, we see that he won’t step on so much as a brochure because it’s a violation of the tradition he was raised in to step on the written word.)

I’d highly recommend this book. It’s especially good for those who are seeking to gain insight into Singapore, Punjabi culture, or who want to see how mental illness is swept under the rug to the detriment of all involved.

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BOOK REVIEW: A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin

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A Spy in the House of Love (Cities of the Interior #4)A Spy in the House of Love by Anaïs Nin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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The novel’s lead character, Sabina, is an actress who has a series of extra-marital affairs over the short period covered by the novel. Intrigue is generated at the book’s beginning when Sabina contacts a character that we know only as the “lie detector” and petitions him to watch her. The lie detector follows Sabina throughout the course of her sexual dalliances with four men other than her husband, but the reader is only made explicitly aware of his presence during Sabina’s conversations with him, which bookend the events of the novel.

One might presume this novel would be categorized as erotica or romance, but it’s not so graphic as to be typical of the former, nor so much of a celebration of romance to count as the latter. I’d place this work simply as literary fiction. It focuses on the character of Sabina and the conflict that resides within her – on the on hand, she craves the attention of multiple men; but on the other hand, she is in turmoil about this need. The lie detector serves as a confessor, and by having her activities known to someone she hopes to be unburdened. The language is often verges on the poetic.

I enjoyed this novel both for its language and its reflection on the inner conflict of the human condition. I’d recommend this work for readers of literary fiction.

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BOOK REVIEW: Messy by Tim Harford

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Messy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our LivesMessy: The Power of Disorder to Transform Our Lives by Tim Harford
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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The book’s premise is simple: being neat and tidy isn’t the great virtue you’ve been led to believe, and being messy isn’t inherently a vice. Over nine chapters, Harford explores the various dimensions in which our impulse to toward tidiness can get in our way, and for which a little messiness might be the cure. Each chapter uses a central story or two as exemplars, with other stories and anecdotes providing support.

The book’s introduction sets up the idea by describing a famous concert in Köln (Cologne) by Kieth Jarrett in which the pianist reluctantly agreed to play the concert on a sub-par piano, and (it’s argued because of the limitations of that instrument) went on to produce the best-selling solo jazz album. This tale sets up chapter one, which focuses on creativity, nicely. Creativity may be explicitly the topic of chapter one, but it’s a concept that cuts across the entirety of the book. Tidiness – it is argued — is antagonistic to creativity. In the first chapter, Harford describes how David Bowie partnered up with Brian Eno, and how Eno’s “oblique strategies” – while they annoyed the musicians to no end by throwing monkey wrenches into the act of making music – were highly successful in producing a unique sound.

Chapter two discusses collaboration, which always makes a mess. Central to this chapter is a discussion of the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős and the famous Erdős number that virtually all scholars are familiar with — at least those in who work in math, science, engineering, and other disciplines with a quantitative bent. It’s sort of a Kevin Bacon six-degrees-of-separation for those who make mathematics. The number describes how far removed one is from having a paper penned with this notoriously prolific mathematician (co-authored, one removed co-author, etc.,) and everyone publishing quantitative / mathematical scholarship desired a low number. The point made by Harford wasn’t just that collaboration in general is messy, but that working with Erdős, specifically, was, and it required collaborators to adjust to his peculiar, professorial ways.

Chapter three explores how tidy workplaces sometimes hinder productivity. The central case is MIT’s Building 20, which was popped up in record time to meet a wartime demand. The building housed a disproportionate amount of world-class science and engineering, and it’s argued that this was in part because its poor design put random people together on long walks to exits or toilets, and in part because – since it was a hideous monstrosity of a building – no one cared if its labs and offices were a mess or not.

Chapter four delves into the value of mess in improvisation. Of course, Jazz is revisited in this chapter, but the lead story is Martin Luther King Jr.’s most famous speech and how it came out of being forced by circumstance to abandon his usual process of extensive preparation and editing. Chapter five describes messy tactics as winning strategies. Erwin Rommel’s success by disruption and chaos creation is at the heart of this chapter as is the development of Britain’s SAS which sometimes beat Rommel at his own game by using a similar approach using smaller, more agile, and more elite forces. There is also an extensive discussion of how Amazon went from humble beginnings to being the 800 pound gorilla of online shopping.

The sixth chapter investigates the role of incentives. For an economist, this is a fascinating topic as the key to understanding economic behavior is usually to follow the incentives. Of course, unintended consequences often go hand in hand with attempts to produce / manipulate incentives. Much of this chapter describes how attempts to tie up loose ends through regulation have ended up generating worse outcomes than could ever have been anticipated.

The next chapter (ch. 7) is about automation, which could be seen as an attempt to clean up messy activities. Harford discusses the situation with self-driving cars, which it’s hoped will help to make highways safer. However, the case he concentrates on is that of flight Air France 447, which went down in part because its inexperienced pilot at the helm couldn’t cope when the fly-by-wire system designed to anticipate and smooth the pilot’s inputs into the controls suddenly went off-line. In other words, the junior pilot wasn’t used to flying messy.

Chapter 8 is about resilience, and here the author challenges the age-old economic notion that specialization always results in greater productivity. Harford suggests that diversity and intermixing of activities and people – rather than specialization and homogenization – often results in a better outcome. The final chapter takes a wider view at how being messy can help one in life. The author spends a great deal of space to the question of how on-line dating services do such a poor job – spoiler alert – they try to make the messy process of finding a soul mate neat and tidy.

The book has citations and end-notes. In the Kindle edition, these notes are hyperlinked for ease of use. There are no graphics, but they aren’t missed.

I enjoyed reading this book and found it to offer many fascinating cases. I will say, as I was reading these well-researched and interestingly described cases, I sometimes had to think hard (maybe do some mental gymnastics) to make the connection between the case at hand and the book’s central theme – leaving me to wonder if I was missing something or whether there wasn’t some shoe-horning of interesting anecdotes into the book to produce a work that was more about being interesting than about proving a particular point. That said, I would recommend the book, particularly for anyone interested in increasing their creativity, productivity, or both.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Memory Illusion by Julia Shaw

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The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False MemoryThe Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory by Julia Shaw
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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Julia Shaw is a psychologist who conducted research into whether (and how) false memories could be “planted” in a person’s mind – and not just any memories, but memories of having committed a crime that one actually didn’t. That research is fascinating, and I think it’s tremendously valuable given the disparity between how accurate people believe their memories are and how fallible they are in practice. This disparity has played a major role in many a miscarriage of justice with eye-witnesses historically being considered the gold standard of evidence in criminal trials. Of course, I’m also a bit uneasy about people learning the recipe for an optimal process of generating false memories as it has the taint of being MK Ultra-level nefarious. (Though it should be pointed out that subjects must be active – if unwitting – participants in creating these false memories, so “planting” memories is an oversimplification.) This book discusses Shaw’s research, but it’s more of an overview of science’s understanding of the limits of memory and how those limits conflict with our beliefs – at least about one’s own memory [we often recognize how fallible other people’s memories are.]

The book consists of ten chapters. Chapter one dives into to one of the most common occurrences of false memory, and that’s the claim by some people that they remember events from their infancy – if not their own birth. Shaw presents the evidence for why such memories aren’t possible. This sets up the whole subject nicely because one must ask how so many people can claim to remember events that are physiologically impossible for them to have remembered, and to frequently be right about most key details. No one is suggesting that such people are liars (not all – or even most — of them, anyway.)

Imagine a school-age child hearing a story about his or her life as a baby. Hearing said story triggers a visualization in this child’s mind, and that visualization might well be filed away in memory, but when that memory is recalled the person in question may not realize she is recalling her imagined image of a story and not the actual event itself. Herein lies the crux of false memory: 1.) anything one visualizes in detail might potentially be stored away and become undifferentiated from the experiencing of an event; 2.) when we recall a memory we are recalling the last time we remembered it and not the event directly, and this can lead to a disparity between the memory and the actual event as it gets tied up with what’s going on in one’s mind at the time.

Chapter two explores perception, and how flawed perceptions may become flawed or tarnished memories. Just as memory isn’t the direct recording of events that we often feel it is, perception isn’t a direct replication of the world but rather a model generated in the brain. Therefore, the limitations and inaccuracies of the mental model are the first line of deviation of memory from reality. Chapter three describes how the brain’s physiology and evolutionary biology produce limitations to our ability to remember – limitations in spite of which we could thrive in the world in which we evolved.

Chapter four begins a series of chapters that take on specific objections that will arise to the ideas about false memory presented in the early chapters. This chapter counters an anticipated objection about people who seem to have perfect memories. In other words, a reader might admit that most people’s memories are crap (and even that his own memory isn’t infallible,) but what about the people with Las Vegas stage shows or the Asperger savant who knows every phone number in the Manhattan White Pages? Surely, these rare cases disprove the general idea of how memory works. Shaw shows that none of these people have perfect memory. Some have spectacular autobiographical memory (memory for their own life events) and others are exceedingly skilled at using mnemonic devices to remember any facts, but they all have limits. There’s also a discussion of how an unusually perfect autobiographical memory is often more of a curse than a blessing. We forget for good reason.

Chapter five examines another common memory fallacy, which is that one can remember best by getting the middleman of the consciousness mind out of the way and feeding data directly into the subconscious. In other words, it takes on subliminal learning. You may be familiar with the idea from ads suggesting that you can learn French in a couple of weeks without cracking a book just by playing audio tracks in one’s sleep and letting oneself learn effortlessly. Like every program that promises growth without effort, this one is debunked. Studies suggest that if one sleeps during such nights, one won’t learn, and if one learns, one isn’t actually sleeping. In other words, learning requires one’s attention.

I will say, the book fell off the rails for me a bit during this chapter. As I wrote in a recent blog post about psychological concepts that even psychologists repeatedly get wrong, Shaw denies the existence of hypnotic trance state as an altered state of consciousness. However, it becomes clear she isn’t arguing against the scientific perspective of what hypnosis is (a physically relaxed but highly mentally attentive state) and is rather denying the misconceived popular notion that seems to involve a person (possibly wearing a glittery cape) taking control of another person’s mind and making them into a zombified drone. She writes in an odd, round-about fashion on this subject as well as the topic of brainwashing – for which she offers her own value-laden definition. I’m not so sure that she didn’t understand hypnosis as much as she wanted to make sure her work was thoroughly distanced from hypnosis and brainwashing. It seems just seems strange and a bit dubious that a scholar studying false memory wouldn’t be thoroughly familiar with the literature on suggestibility and the states of mind most associated with it, i.e. hypnosis. I can only imagine the hoops she had to go through to get her research design through an IRB. (IRB’s are review boards that make determinations about whether a research project is – among other things – ethically defensible. After a series of famous — and ethically questionable — studies by the likes of Stanley Milgram, Ewen Cameron, and Timothy Leary, to name a few, psychology has come under great scrutiny.)

Chapter six asks whywe believe our memories are so awesome despite all evidence to the contrary. This comes down to why most of us unjustifiably judge ourselves superior in most regards. As is true of drivers, almost every person thinks she is better than average in the realm of memory. This is important because it’s not so much that our memory is fallible that leads to problems but that it’s fallible while we think it’s perfect. Chapter seven challenges the belief that there are certain events that are indelibly etched into our brains such as (depending upon age) the Kennedy assassination, the Challenger explosion, or 9/11. Such memories were once considered “flash bulb” memories, perfect renderings of societally traumatic events carved into our synapses. However, once these memories started to be put to the test, it was found that the details — vis-à-vis where one was and what one was doing at the time — are often wrong.

Chapter eight discusses how media and social media mold memories. One element of this is group-think. One’s memories may be molded through manipulation of the fact that people will readily believe that which is consistent with their beliefs while denying that which is inconsistent – regardless of facts and evidence. This chapter also takes on how social media influences memory as a distraction and because of so-called digital amnesia in which people remember less because they figure they can look it up at any time in the vastness of the internet.

Chapter nine proposes that even one’s most traumatic memories aren’t necessarily accurate, and – in fact – might be more likely to be fallacious. This may be the most important chapter of the book because it shows how a confluence of factors (namely, bad questioning tactics and peer / societal pressure) can result in the inadvertent planting of false memories. The chapter focuses on a series of Satanic ritual sexual abuse cases, a number of which were eventually disproved. So eager to build a case to bring believed wrong-doers to justice, law enforcement officers sometimes inadvertently pressured children into making up stories under the guise of trying to get them to open up, stories that sometimes became false memories.

Chapter ten shifts gears to consider what one can do about the issue of faulty memory – in other words how one can avoid being manipulated through exploitation of the limitations of one’s own memory. This is valuable information and not just for legal purposes but for life in general.

The book has a few graphics as necessary throughout the book and has end-notes to provide sources and elaboration on comments in the text.

I found this book to be immensely valuable as food-for-thought. The author presents many fascinating stories and the results of intriguing research studies, all in a readable package. I’d recommend this book for anyone who is interested in the subject of the limits of human memory, how these limits can be manipulated, and how that manipulation can impact the criminal justice process.

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BOOK REVIEW: Perfect Breathing by Al Lee and Don Campbell

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Perfect Breathing: Transform Your Life One Breath at a TimePerfect Breathing: Transform Your Life One Breath at a Time by Al Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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It’s not an exaggeration to say that there is no set of yogic practices with a greater power to transform one’s life than breathing exercises (pranayama.) With this in mind, I’m always on the look out for new sources of insight into breathing – be it from free-divers, Buddhists, sports scientists, yogis, martial artists, or else-wise. This book provides an overview from a diverse set of experts with descriptions of a number of different breathing practices (e.g. Taoist qi gong, yogic pranayama, a practice for runners, etc.,) but it takes as its central tenet a six-second breath that it recommends as the titular “perfect breath.”

Breathing practices are often underestimated. People, after all, figure that they’ve been breathing every day of their lives, so who can teach them anything on the subject. The idea of reading a book on breathing is right up there with watching the paint dry or the grass grow for excitement. Unfortunately, in parts – many densely pack up front – the authors do too little to dissuade readers of this belief. In early chapters and sprinkled throughout, the book is rife with truisms and banal comments that will leave the rankest neophyte thinking they aren’t going to learn anything of value. That said, I’m glad I kept with it, because the authors convey some powerful insights by telling the stories of people from various walks of life who’ve achieved great things by improving their breath.

The book is organized around a central structure of breathing as a tool for improvement of body, mind, emotion, and spirit. This is sound approach to covering the topic, and the discussion of breath as a means to emotional control is particularly beneficial and welcome. It could be argued that the coverage of the topic of spirituality could have been jettisoned without much loss. The authors talked around the subject in away that was vague and insubstantial. To be fair, they may have been trying to avoid running afoul of individuals who were either secular / scientific (non-spiritual) or who had strong sectarian beliefs on spiritual matters.

The book has seven parts. Part I consists of two chapters that offer an introduction into the topic. These could have been pared down without substantial loss of value. Part II (Ch. 3 – 8) is entitled “Your Perfect Breath” and it discusses developing awareness of breath, body, emotion, spirit, and introduces the fundamentals of how one should breath the “perfect breath.” Part III (Ch. 9 – 12) explores the role that breathing practices can have on improving health outcomes. It’s well established that the body puts healing / rebuilding on hold under high stress, when the sympathetic nervous system is engaged. Breathing practices can help trip parasympathetic (rest and digest) activity. Part IV (Ch. 13 – 15) is of particular interest to athletes and those who want to perform better at some physical or mental activity. In addition to discussing both physical and mental performance, the authors devote a chapter to what is sometimes called Flow (Csikszentmihaly) or The Zone, and how breath can play into quieting the mind to facilitate said state. Part V (Ch. 16 – 19) is about breathing as a means to take control of one’s emotional life. People in the throes of emotional turmoil are unlikely to notice how that turmoil influences their breath, but it has a major impact — and it’s a two-way street, i.e. one can help mitigate excessive emotional response through breath. Part VI (Ch. 20 – 21) is devoted to spirituality and the nexus of breath and prayer or meditation. The final part (Ch. 22) explores the idea of the final breath. I thought this was a valuable discussion, given the tremendous anxiety of coming to one’s last breath and its impact on people’s lives.

There are no graphics in the book. They aren’t greatly missed, but might have been useful in places. (It’s probably more accurate to say the authors could have gone into more depth if they’d used graphics and not stayed in such vague territory.) There is an appendix that lists and briefly describes the included exercises, and the e-book / Kindle version includes hyperlinks to the detailed description in the book’s interior. Having a link to the practices is a useful feature. There is also a short section of recommended readings.

While it took me a bit of time to get traction in reading this book, once I did, I learned a great deal. I would recommend it for anyone who is interested in an overview of breathing practices for health, emotional control, and increased physical performance. The authors transmit expertise from a broad range of experts from various walks of life.

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BOOK REVIEW: Human Is? by Philip K. Dick

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Human Is?: A Philip K. Dick Reader (Gollancz S.F.)Human Is?: A Philip K. Dick Reader by Philip K. Dick
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This is a collection of 20 of Philip K. Dick’s short stories written between 1952 and 1973 that explore what it means to be human. Dick waxed philosophical on the question enough that a large collection could be assembled that examines humanity from many fascinating angles. While the age of these stories (and their Cold War taint) might make them seem obsolete, there is more than one way in which this collection is extremely relevant today.

First, artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be on everybody’s mind of late, and several of these stories feature machine intelligence as a means to understand what makes a human in a world in which there are other intelligent entities (in a similar vein, alien intelligence is also considered.) Second, Dick also asks us to consider the reality of a fictitious character who is alive in the minds of many and who might have more impact on the world than any living being. In our current phase of the information age, in which merchants of [dis-]information are becoming adroit at manipulating information and misinformation for their own desired effect, this seems a more crucial question than ever. Finally, there remains the age-old unresolved question of whether there is some x-factor beyond biology (i.e. a soul) that separates humanity from other forms of intelligence. While this is an old question, the fact that most people still believe there is a “soul” (by whatever name it’s called), even if most scientifically-minded people don’t see any reason to think so, means that it will continue to be a question with potential societal ramifications.

A sub-theme across these stories is the Cold War undercurrent of anxiety that the world could be turned into a dystopian wasteland at any moment. (In most of the stories, it already has been.) Again, if one can look past the references to the Soviet Union being cast as foe in many of the stories, one will find that the stories and the emotional zeitgeist aren’t as faded as they might at first seem.

The stories include some that movie-goers unfamiliar with Dick’s writing will know from Hollywood cinema (e.g. “Second Variety” (movie title: “Screamers,”) “Paycheck” (an eponymous film with Ben Affleck,) “Adjustment Team” (movie: “The Adjustment Bureau,”) and “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (i.e. both “Total Recall” movies.) But it also includes some deep cuts and lesser known stories.

1.) Beyond Lies The Wub: The crew of a ship is divided over whether to make an intelligent alien a prisoner or dinner.

2.) The Defenders: Owing to high radiation in the wake of nuclear war, humans are living underground, leaving the war-fighting to AI machines. A group of military men make an expedition to the surface only to get a big surprise.

3.) Roog: A dog is more than the family pet they think him to be, it’s secretly a guardian against the Roog.

4.) Second Variety: The Cold War went hot and the US built AI metallic creatures to fight the Soviets. The problem arises when these intelligent machines developed their own ideas, building androids because a robot that looked human could get into the midst of humans for better killing. The Soviets – after taking heavy losses – discover from serial number placards on androids that variety 1 is a wounded soldier and variety 3 is an orphan boy, begging the question of what is the Second Variety? When Americans end up among the last survivors, the question becomes essential for them as well.

5.) Impostor: Police take a man into custody who they believe to be an android with a dead human’s consciousness loaded into it, along with a bomb that could do tremendous damage. Of course, the man thinks they’ve got it all wrong.

6.) The Preserving Machine: A scientist builds a machine to preserve music, which he believes is at risk of being lost to future generations, but ultimately he learns that life always adapts and changes in unanticipated ways.

7.) The Variable Man: In a world in which decisions are made based on statistical models, the decision to go to war is in gridlock because the odds of winning stay close to 50/50. When a man from the future with a gift for repairing devices shows up, he upsets the apple cart by making the models unstable.

8.) Paycheck: A gifted engineer gets his memory wiped as part of a deal with a huge firm so that he cannot disclose any secrets about the top-secret high-tech project he was working on. He’s irked to find out that before his memory was wiped he asked for an envelope full of odds and ends in lieu of his lucrative paycheck. However, after being picked up by police, he soon realizes that the junk in the envelope was actually a well-thought out collection of useful items – if he can figure out how to use them.

9.) Adjustment Team: In a world in which a heavy hand has to periodically make major societal adjustments without people knowing, one man unwittingly becomes witness to these secret machinations. (Like “Paycheck,” the movie uses Dick’s concept without sharing the same character details and story details. However, I’d say “Paycheck” is closer to the story than is this one. However, it’s worth reading both because neither is exactly like the movie.)

10.) The Father-Thing: What if aliens could take over the consciousness of a loved one? How soon would one recognize the difference, if your father looked just like your father, but his behavior became a bit… off?

11.) Foster, You’re Dead: The “Keeping Up with the Joneses” mentality is a central theme in this story. A son wants one of the latest high-tech bomb shelters both because of Cold War anxiety, because it would be cool for a boy to have a subterranean lair, and because would be a prestige signal. The dad, however, is reluctant to get caught up in keeping up with the Joneses.

12.) Human Is: A scientist, who happens to be married to a woman who finds him cold and distant, is body-snatched while he’s away on assignment on a different world. His wife is the first to recognize her husband has been replaced, but does she want the original back?

13.) The Mold of Yancy: This story is about a soft dystopia, but instead of Huxley’s vision of people being plied with drugs and free and easy sex, these subjects are kept docile by the folksy wisdom of a beloved character who’s a complete fiction (unbeknownst to everyone.) Everybody wants their kids to grow up in the mold of the great war hero, Yancy. [Note: Even with all the AI stories, this may be the most apropos for today’s world, information used to manipulate people’s behavior without any threat of force.]

14.) If There Were No Benny Cemoli: Like “The Mold of Yancy” this story explores the question of what it means to be human by considering the fictitious person as a societal touchstone. If you can make people believe in a person who isn’t, and to change their behavior accordingly, what have you created?

15.) The Days of Perky Pat: In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, people are passionately into playing a game which revolves around a character named “Perky Pat.” In a way, she is a surrogate for who they were before war transformed the world. What will happen when they expand out to play members of a neighboring enclave who have a similar “Connie Companion” game?

16.) Oh, to be a Blobel: In a war against an alien race, a former spy was genetically altered to appear like the enemy species. After the war is over, he discovers that he can’t be stably turned back to human form. He will revert to the amorphous form of a Blobel for several hours per day, and stressors risk causing spontaneous transformation. As he will never be able to be married and have children with a human woman – who would have him – a solution is suggested whereby he will marry a former Blobel spy who turns into a human form for several hours per day.

17.) We Can Remember It for You Wholesale: A white-collar worker, Douglas Quail, who wants to go to Mars, decides to go to a memory-implant clinic that can provide him with a vivid detailed memory of a vacation to Mars. But when they try to implant said memory, it’s discovered that he isn’t who he – or the company — thought.

18.) The Electric Ant: A man who thought he was human finds out that he’s actually an android. The identity crisis that follows causes him to contemplate suicide.

19.) A Little Something for Us Tempunauts: There’s an accident with the first American crew of time-travelers, putting them into a closed time loop (i.e. like the movie “Groundhog Day.”) The question of the meaning of life in this story revolves around the unclear question of whether the tempunauts are alive or dead.

20.) Pre-Persons: In a future dystopia, abortion isn’t only legal; the age until which it can be carried out has been extended to 12. There are forces in society who rail against the government doctrine that a soul is attained precisely on one’s twelfth birthday, but that minority is considered to be the lunatic fringe.

This is an exceptional collection of stories, offering plenty to consider about the meaning of being human. Dick takes on the questions from several angles with a level of creativity only he could. I’d highly recommend this book for readers of science fiction or those who enjoy philosophical fiction.

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BOOK REVIEW: Novel Without a Name by Duong Thu Huong

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Novel Without a NameNovel Without a Name by Dương Thu Hương
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

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This novel’s protagonist, Quan, is a North Vietnamese soldier who, after ten years of war-fighting and surviving, has worked his way up to a junior officer position with a small unit under his command. Much of the story describes a road trip in the midst of war. One of Quan’s childhood friends who is now his superior officer, Luong, assigns Quan the task of going to visit a distant medical unit to check on a third common village friend, Bien, who is said to have had a nervous breakdown. Luong, further tells Quan to take some well-earned time off for a home visit, since the junior officer hasn’t been to see his home in a decade. In the latter part of the book, Quan returns to his unit after an uneasy home visit to see the father with whom he has strained relations (his mother ran away with another man), the neighbors he seems closer to than he is his own father, and his childhood sweetheart who has fallen on hard times — having had to accept that the two would never be married. On the way, back to his unit, Quan checks on Bien who he busted out of horrific conditions at a field hospital and got reassigned to a special unit with the non-Infantry, but macabre, task of building coffins. The book ends with another uneasy transition, the war’s end – which sees Quan’s comrades in celebration, but also not sure what to expect after an entire adult life spent at war.

Interspersed with the real-time events that occur as Quan travels through a jungle war-zone, one is shown flashbacks to some of the intense traumas of his years at war. These include friendly-fire incidents and the “only the good die young” effect in which it seems the most kind and virtuous are often the most perishable in times of war. There’s also a very human story that’s told about how war effects lives and transforms relationships – in some cases forging unbreakable bonds and in other cases building impenetrable barriers between loved ones.

I’ve read a few books on the Vietnam War, both fiction and non-fiction, but this may be the first I’ve read from a North Vietnamese perspective. What is interesting about that is that the experiences and themes are often not that different from one sees in works like Karl Marlantes’s “Matterhorn” or Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried.” Soldiers on both sides have similar day-to-day experiences from boredom to horrors, and it has largely the same effect upon the soldier’s psyches. One of the overarching themes this book has in common with its American-centric counterparts is growing disillusionment. Like the American soldiers who often couldn’t comprehend what they were fighting for (other than the survival of their friends and themselves), Quan’s core beliefs become challenged over the course of the novel. It’s often been said that there are no atheists in foxholes, but it seems equally true that there are no ideologues in foxholes. The pragmatic concerns demanded of the war-fighter make it hard to be an impassioned Marxist or an impassioned follower of any ideology. This is seen in one scene in which an older officer is put off by Quan’s lack of enthusiasm for the Marxist message, and then later when the tables are turned and Quan converses with a young subordinate soldier who is even more disillusioned.

Of course, there are differences. Quan is much more at home in the environment of the war – though not exempt from the miseries of the jungle. It’s not like he’s been dropped on a different planet as it was for American soldiers who had no experience of tropical living. On the other hand, an American soldier could at least rest assured that his loved one’s were home in safety, but for Quan and his peers there is no reason to think family is any more safe than they. Of course, the concept of traipsing through the war zone on a home visit after years successively at war represents one important difference that is also fundamental to the story.

I found this book to be gripping and illuminating. It’s highly readable and relatable, even though there are flashbacks that take one out of a linear timeline; they are well done and not confusing. I would highly recommend this book for anyone who reads war stories, who enjoys translated fiction from other cultures, or who just wants a thought-provoking work of literary fiction.

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